Hey guys,

Got a bit of an interesting problem, I hope you can help me out - we've been pulling our hair out trying to find a solution to this and Comdial tech support hasn't had much to say except for changing boards out.

Here's the setup:

FX-11 96
Release: 198 or later
Feature set :17F
Services board: Srv3-11

As for boards, we've got:
S1: FXLST08
S2: FXVOIP-l
S3: FXLDS-16
S4: FXLDS-16
S5: FXLDS-16
S6: FXISTM-c16

The system is forwarding calls through the voip-l board to a hosted mp5000 system, then goes out through a pri in the colo. Except for the IST ports, which grab onsite copper lines.

And the problem:

Whenever a fax is sent in this particular room, with 6 digital extensions around it, it silences the call on ports 5 and 41 - which are on either side of the fax machine.

We've done this much so far in troubleshooting:
Changed the cabinet (we had a shipment of crap equipment at one point) - the problem disappeared for about 3 days then popped back up.
Changes Services board
We moved 41 out of that room, and replaced it with one on the same board as pt 5. The problem disappeared for about 3 days. Changed out port 5 to another port - that port then started to show the same problems.
We have changed out the IST board, port, moved it to another physical cable, still remained on those same ports.
Changed out digital board those stations are on and the services board.
We've changed out the fax machine with no luck.

Any help with this problem is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nathan

Take your services board out and ensure all daughter boards are fully seated and all the screws are tight! Don't forget the standoffs!!

Yep, that was one of the first things I had checked. They are all tight, and all there.

I'd bet on a bad SRV3 board. I had a few.

i am with the bad srv3 board. Swap it and see what happens.

Oh yeah. What color is your cabinet. Black or Grey?

It's a black cabinet.

We've changed the services board - was the second piece we changed out when this started happening. We had another problem (before I changed the cabinet out) of a group of digital phone lcd displays going blank when calls were answered - that turned out to be a power issue with the cabinet, which led me to believe these two issues were related. But the services board was changed out after the cabinet was replaced.

I reread my first post and realized I didn't add that in there.

We'll try it again, just awaiting a shipment on some new parts for stock.

Is this a new install or relocation, or did this issue just start happening at an existing site with the original equipment? If it is a newly installed system, you may want to check the cabling at the MDF. It sounds like everytime call comes in, the issue occurs which sounds like a direct short causing an issue either on the card or the backplane. Since the hardware is not solving the problem, I thought this would be another elimination step in resolving other potential issues. Let us know how this turns out, and good luck.

It's a newly installed system on existing cabling.

A short is what I was beginning to believe as well, maybe a tail of a wire touching the jack or the box in the wall.

We've had another tech onsite doing some more testing today, I'll let you guys know what he did and the results when he arrives.

Thanks for the input so far everyone!

"Existing Cabling"!!! Ouch. I think you just found your problem. I would check all the jacks where new phones are installed to make sure there wasnt any rigging done from the previous system install such as looping or modem sharing, etc. Looking forward to the outcome on this one.

Go into Hyperterminal and look at the status logs. Had a site doing similar issues and it turned out to be a completely skinned 4 pair with all pairs shorted on a digital set run. Thanks Sparkie for the excellent cable run.


I would also have tech support turn on Blackbox. When the issue is recreated they should be able to diagnose it.


BTW see if you have a SRV2-II in stock. Still leaning towards a SRV3-II issue.

I think our tech is onsite again today - should be running a new cable as well. I'll let you know how that works out.

I'm going to check hyperteminal logs towards the end of the day when I get some time away from these remote jobs.

I'll run that SRV2-II board idea by my boss, we've just started using those SRV3-II boards in the last few months.

Found out what it is!

We took the fax machine completely off the system, connected it to a copper line and sent a bunch of test faxes - it was still silencing the calls, but not as frequently (one in every 15 or so).

Turns out that the vendors lines are bleeding / back-feeding through each other.

We disconnected all the copper lines from the system, sent faxes through the one copper line and bingo! No problem. Reconnected the lines and it happens again.

We've got the vendor coming out tomorrow to start checking their wiring.

Thanks for letting us know the final outcome! I'm sure all who responded made the presumption that CO was checked first and thus eliminated. I guess the KISS principle still applies.

Haha yeah it does, we did move the fax machine to a copper line as one of the first tests but didn't disconnect all the lines from the co board. The problem screamed Services board at first.

The clients old system had copper lines to all the analog devices, cc machines, faxes etc - when we installed the new one we cut back the number of copper lines and fed the analog devices off the ist board.

Add one to my list of strange problems.